525: BZZZ!

Quiz shows, I love 'em. There used to be a soft spot in my heart for The Weakest Link but thankfully I got over that a long time ago. There was the enjoyable later rounds with the more difficult questions fired rapidly for a minute or two at a time. Unfortunately there was also the offensively bad segments during which the malformed, witless, facially-twitching old hag Anne Robinson grimaced out patronising filth to the line up of stammers and desperates. These took up more and more time, becoming increasingly unbearable, until the programme disappeared right up Robinson's dog's-bottom mouth. Same applies to Chris Fucking Tarrant and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

A quiz show should be about questions. Questions, questions, questions. As much and as many with as little filler as possible. This is why the biggest and best quiz is obviously University Challenge, despite the questions being so damn hard. The weekend before last I got two questions right during an entire episode. The first was an art question about IKB and Yves Klein, the second was a science question, the jist of which has slipped my mind. Each time I got one right I leaped for joy and shouted my victory into the night sky, huzzah. It's on tonight, Manchester against some team who isn't Manchester, and I will again be trying to get a handful of questions right.

Much easier, but just as fun is ITV's excellent The Chase, where a small team take their turns to individually tet-a-tet with a big-brained giant. They each have an individual round of one minute in order to build a prize pot, then they take on the chaser who attempts to eliminate them. If they get through unscathed they take their prize to the team pot and return to the group. Once all have played, the remaining members have two minutes of solid questioning to get as many correct as possible. Then it's the chaser's turn. If the chaser matches the team, they lose; if he doesn't they win. Simple format, loads of questions, minimal amounts of amusing banter. It's good.

As you were.

148: First General Secretary of the WikiLeaks Party

Enemies of the free world:  Osama bin Laden, Islamic fascist and aspiring totalitarian.  Kim jong-Il, communist dictator and the living embodiment of Orwell’s Big Brother.  Robert Mugabe, insane money grabber, raping his country’s economy and impoverishing his people while making vast personal wealth.  They have many things in common.  They need complete control of their governments and their people.  They are monarchs, dictators and despots.  They stamp out free press, free speech, freedom of thought, of religion, of economy, and the freedom to live safely and unmolested.  But now the free world has a new enemy; one who seems to stand firmly and staunchly in favour of freedom of expression: Julian Assange, as the public face of WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks is good for the world.  Knowledge is power and the main reason governments would have for withholding knowledge is withholding power; to maintain the current social order, the status quo.  Allowing classified documents to surface publically may cause problems in the short term as exposed wrong-doers and liars desperately claw to maintain their privileged positions, but eventually this could lead to a utopia of real democracy and global transparency.  I’m seeing a sort of virtual democracy where every individual gets a say in the political process, as opposed to the current structure where democracy ends as soon as the ballots close.  I can see a united humanity created from happy equals, a moneyless society, pure egalitarianism; all we need to do now is create a warp drive, and wait for the Vulcans to make first contact.

WikiLeaks is not about Assange, and people calling for his freedom need to get their priorities right.  If he is suspected of rape, he needs to face the due process of law.  Don’t automatically assume that he is innocent and the victim of an international conspiracy to bring down WikiLeaks.  He is just one man; a man who has risen to fame and power incredibly quickly, and that can do weird and terrible things to a person’s sense of right and wrong.  If you defend him you intrinsically link him to WikiLeaks and increase the risk of his shame bringing down WikiLeaks.  Forget about him, don’t let a cult of celebrity form around WikiLeaks or he becomes just another dictator controlling the flow of information and manipulating the public and the power structure.

WikiLeaks is for the benefit of all of us, and is not personal private army of Julian Assange.  Why does it even need a public figurehead, director or spokesperson?  Can it be that it is a brand new, power-forming technique, and is merely a way of building a global tyranny ruled by First General Secretary of the WikiLeaks Party Assange?  Are those blindly leaping to his defence against the rape allegations just trying to protect themselves against the first wave of Great Purges?  It won’t be the first time that a popular movement by the people for the people fighting tyranny, has quickly turned into a personality cult controlling the masses for the personal benefit of the few.

Globalisation and mass communication brings many benefits, but among the negatives it brings new and as-yet unknown opportunities for tyranny and control.  Who knows: WikiLeaks may bring down the governments of the world, only to replace them with a single all-powerful celebrity cult – Julian Assange, Eternal First Citizen of the Planet WikiLeaks.  Let this be a warning: this terrible vision of the future will definitely happen.  As whistleblowers feel the need to throw sensitive information at him, he gets more and more powerful.  Someone from google gives him everyone’s internet history; elsewhere he acquires your bank details, ISP info, passport and identification, access to your medical records.  He is watching you.

In summation: WikiLeaks, probably good.  Blind support of Julian Assange, probably bad.  Don’t forget to think; question and mistrust those on the left, as well as the right.  And thus I end my preachy rant.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Support WikiLeaks if you fancy by donating here, but remember "every organisation rests upon a mountain of secrets".